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have often been associated with uncon scious eccentricity. The eccentricity must be unconscious, because consciousness of eccentricity at once reduces it to a form of vanity which is entirely inconsistent with Christian excellence. How many excellent Christians have been eccentric, deviating more or less from the conventional type of goodness which has been recognized by contemporary religious opinion. They pass away, and when they are gone men do jus tice to their characters; but while they are still with us how hard do many of us find it to remember that there may be-a higher reason for their peculiarities'than we think. We know not thè full purpose of each saintly life in the designs of Providence; we know not much of the depths and heights whence it draws its inspirations; we can not tell whence it cometh or Whither it goeth. Only we !know that He whose 'workmanship it is bloweth where He listeth; and this naturally leads us to remark the practical interpretation which the Holy Spirit often puts upon our Lord’s words by, selecting as His chosen workmen those who seem to be least fitted by nature for such high ’service. The apostle has told us how in the first age He set Himself to defeat human anticipations. ‘‘Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many people, are called ;” ; learned academies, powerful connections, gentle blood did little enough for the gos pel in the days when, it won its first and greatest victories. The Holy Spirit, as Nicodemus knew, passed by the varied learning and high station of the Sanhedrin, and breathed where' He listed on the peasants of Galilee; He breathed on them a power which would shake the world. And thus has it been again and again in the gerierations wllich have followed. When the j great Aquinas was a student of philosophy under Albertus Magnus at Cologne, he was known among his con-
temporaries as “the dumb Ox;”, so little did they divine what was to be his place in the theology of Western Christendom. And to those of us who can look back upon the memories of this university for a quar ter of a century or more, few things appear more remarkable than the surprises which the later lives of men constantly afford; sometimes it is a failure 'of early, natural promise, but more often a rich develop ment of intellectual and practical capacity where there had seemed to be no promise at all. We can remember, perhaps, some dull quiet man who seemed to be without a ray'of .genius, or, stranger still, without anything interesting or marked in charac ter, but who now exerts, and most legiti mately, the widest influence for good, and whose name is repeated by thousands with grateful respect. ,Or we can call to mind another whose whole mind was given to what was frivolous, or even degrading, and who now is a leader in everything that elevates and improves his .fellows. The secret of these transfigurations is ever the same. ' In those days these men did not yet see their way; they were like travelers through the woods at night, when the sky is hidden and all things seem to be/Other than they are. • • ■ , .' v 1 Since then the sun has risen and all has changed. The creed of the Church of Christ, in its beauty and its power, has been flashed by the Divine Spirit upon their hearts and understandings; and they are other men. They have seen that there is something worth living for in earnest; that God, the soul, the future, are im mense realities, compared with which all else is tame and insignificant. They have learned something of that personal love of our crucified Lord, which is itself a moral and religious force of the highest’ order, and which has carried them forward without their knowing it. And what has been will assuredly repeat^ itself.
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